life without a plot

Author's note: It's funny how I never plan on these things and they happen anyway. I had absolutely no intentions of writing about Jack and Ianto again after the big post in 2009; more than 9.000 words of meta—what was there even left to write about? But then I wrote about death, life, and what it means to be human in DW and TW, and in the process of rewatching for that I had a (short) paragraph's worth of an idea that I didn't think would amount to more than that, but somehow kept... not so much nagging, as occasionally nibbling at my mind, and months and months later, I'm not sure how exactly, it suddenly turned out that there still was something I wanted to write after all before we get new canon. Which then developed a life of its own, took me to places I hadn't expected, and, well. Insert obligatory warning for excessive wordiness. It's also, I guess, a sort of post-CoE closure for me, because this time I managed to tie up all the threads running through the first three seasons in my mind.




Time - he's waiting in the wings
He speaks of senseless things
His script is you and me, boy

- David Bowie, Time -



The World Is Always Ending: Time in Torchwood's Jack/Ianto Arc

Time has always been Jack's theme. Before he travelled with the Doctor, he was a Time Agent turned time-travelling conman who lost two years of his life somewhere along the way. When he danced with Rose in The Empty Child, it was in front of the clock of Big Ben. But after Rose brought him back to life permanently and he accidentally got himself stranded in 1869 in the attempt of trying to meet the Doctor again, his relationship with time changed radically. He lost the relative freedom and control he used to have over it, and suddenly found himself once more chained to a linear timeline, no longer able to jump back and forth through the centuries and millennia, using history for his own purpose. He lost his mortality, something that, as DW canon also repeatedly emphasises, constitutes a basic element of what it means to be human, but at the same time he was forced to live his life in a very human fashion, day after day after day, without even the most basic freedom every human being has, to end it. Time became a burden.

Among the clutter on Jack's desk there are two objects that are a permanent fixture throughout both the first and second series of TW: the growing Tardis coral and an hourglass. Regardless of whether they were put there with this purpose in mind, between them they illustrate Jack's state of being, and his dilemma. The former is an obvious symbol for the Doctor, for what happened to Jack, for the ability to travel in time he is hoping to regain eventually: the power of (and, to an extent, the power over) space and time. It can be read to represent his new life that, in absolute terms, has only just begun and that he's still trying to get used to. The hourglass, on the other hand, traditionally symbolises the fleetingness of time, the brevity of human life; mortality and death. It is used briefly in Fragments to illustrate the passage of the years and decades Jack spent in Torchwood, but it can also stand for the old, human, life Jack lost, the humanity he's struggling to maintain, and, as a memento mori, for a heightened awareness of the death that is omnipresent in the world around him, but continues to elude him. If the sand running through the glass symbolises the human lifespan, then in Jack's case the hourglass gets turned around again and again with each death, and the sand starts running anew. It's between these two polar opposites that Jack has to find his way now.


( Part 1: Ten Minutes, and Counting )


( Part 2: Eight Thirty-Two, Thirty-One... )


( Part 3: Thirty Minutes )

[Hu. I still can't quite believe that I'm actually, finally, clicking 'post' on this entry.]


Author's note (sort of): Massively tl;dr, sneakily disguised by fake lj-cuts; don't say I didn't warn you. Looking at the deaths seemed like a good starting point since they're such a persistent theme and especially once the last three DW specials turned the entire story into a struggle with death and the acceptance of mortality, and it... kind of got out of hand from there. A little. A lot. It still feels like an awkward and unsatisfactory compromise in far too many ways, but it's the best I can do at the moment and after six months of turning this over and over in my mind I'm tired. Camus quote notwithstanding, no philosophers, living or dead, were harmed mangled quoted embarrassed in the making of this post, but I'd never even have found the courage to write this without the inspiration from Rüdiger Safranski's books, most of which I read while I wrote & watched & wrote & rewatched & rewrote & edited. I hope he doesn't self-google.

Final note: TW (abbreviated) refers to the show, Torchwood (written out) to the institute; DW only to the RTD era and 'The Doctor' only to Nine and Ten, because everything else, even if I'd watched more of the old series than I have so far, would be completely beyond the scope of this post.



You think knowing the answers would make you feel better?

Death, life, and what it means to be human in Russell T Davies's Doctor Who and Torchwood





There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.

~ Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus ~

For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.

~Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain ~

'Who said you're not important?'

~ The Ninth Doctor, 1.08 Father's Day ~



( I. Doctor Who S1: Everything has its time and everything dies. )


( II. Doctor Who S2: We forget because we must. )


( III. Torchwood S1: It's just bearable. It has to be. )


( IV. Doctor Who S3: Rage, rage against the dying of the light. )


( V. Torchwood S2: That's what I come back for. )


( VI. Doctor Who S4: We always have a choice. )


( VII. Torchwood Children of Earth: So, tell me, what should I have done? )


( VIII. Doctor Who 2009/10 specials: Lived too long. )

# Since I'm usually the last person to come across this sort of thing, it'll probably have made its way around the internet twice already, but just in case that it hasn't: Zarah's Paradise — fantastic WIP webcomic about the current political situation in Iran.

# My sister keeps forwarding me emails from someone from my class, because they're organising a reunion (20 years OMGOMGomg....), and somehow they managed to miss me on facebook, but apparently got hold of her Uni email. Just, no. NO. There's no one I want to meet, the only person I'd even remotely like to see again is former best friend A., but that would be extremely awkward and disappointing, and most of all I'm so completely ashamed of my life and my inability to turn it into something even halfway presentable that I just don't want to hear about everyone else's careers and families. I don't need to actually go court depression.

# Last week was really rather horrible mostly because of the sudden heatwave. 28+ degrees in the shop in the afternoon, no fresh air, after 3 or 4 pm it became hard to breathe or do anything more than just sit around lethargically. Yes, I know innumerable people all over the world have it worse and I should quit whining. It sill kind of sucked in a relative way. Drained and tired all the time.

# Finished TW S2, and other than my apparently ever-increasing dislike of DMW nothing has changed all that much. What kills me every time is Jack in Adam, because there, just for a little while, you get to see the man behind all those facades and all the dysfunctionality, and it it makes one really wish he could find that again. This is probably going to sound completely ridiculous because I'm terrible at trying to describe this kind of emotional stuff, but (for me) there is so much more strength in Jack in this episode, a kind of certainty, an inner peace despite the painful memories Adam brought up. And he has to give it up again in the end. *sigh*

And the scene at the end in the vaults with Adam is maybe my favourite JB moment pre-CoE. MMW, obviously, but I think the sheer mix of emotions when he realises what Adam had done and that he's still going to swallow the pill... that's pretty brilliant, IMO. The resurrection glove is forgiven.

# Admittedly that's a really old complaint, but what I really don't understand is how people could say that Adrift is Gwen's fault. They're all tragic figures there, but if someone is to blame for the whole painful mess it's Jack with his compulsive hiding and tablula rasa-ing. He withheld the information Gwen would have needed and that almost certainly would have changed her mind until it was too late. His motivations are somewhat understandable, and his perspective obviously still rather warped after a century in a place that just stuck people like that into the vaults, basically leaving them to rot, but his behaviour in this episode is... unprofessional, to say the least. Even for his standards. I guess you could say it's Gwen's fault for not trusting Jack, but then he's never given her much reason to, and certainly not in this episode.

# Jack and Captain Hart are totally TW's Wesely and Lilah. Maybe it's just because JB and JM had a lot of chemistry, but they project the same kind of rather fucked up but completely tangible connection and history that Fred notices is Cavalry...

Okay, this one has probably been discussed up & down & sideways at the time somewhere else without me ever noticing, because I just wasn't very interested in Jack/Gwen other than not seeing it happen, but from Gwen's comment in Sleeper about Jack's manners in bed, with a hastily added 'Apparently, so I've heard,'—did she ever sleep with Jack, or just talk to Ianto a lot while Jack was away? And if it's the former, when would that have happened?

I still find all the sudden Jack/Gwen not-even-subtext in S2 a bit odd, because as I saw it in S1 the sexual tension between them more or less evaporated after Ghost Machine when Jack let the silence stretch for a little too long after Gwen's 'Doesn't it get lonely at night?', and Gwen turned to Owen for comfort a couple of episodes later. But it's undeniably there in S2—and it's not even so much Jack, who may love her in whatever not-quite-platonic way he does, and may not be happy at the prospect of possibly losing her to her non-TW life, but I think has always been always realistic enough to know that he'll never be someone who'll make her happy; it's Gwen who does seem to be waiting for him to say something when she says 'Well, no one else will have me', only once again he doesn't. Or again when they talk about the wedding at the end of Sleeper. And Jack sends her home again—'Keep doing what we do', and in the looks exchanged between them there does seem to be a sort of understanding that it isn't going to happen, although it's definitely seems to be more his decision than hers.

Strange.

I'm not even going to squint at my flist (or lj generally speaking) until I've watched S3, because I suspect I'm already a tiny bit spoiled anyway, but I'll just post my thoughts about the audio plays in the meantime. Since I'm usually a very visual person I wasn't sure at all how I'd do without the optic element, but scribbling happened anyway; I think it's something of a pavlovian reflex by now. Actual pen & paper scribbling even, in my computerless holiday state. Now posting that before actually watching S3 is clearly an exercise in masochism and superfluousness, but OTOH I'm kind of curious how my interpretations compare to actual canon. Plus, I have an unhealthy inability to throw away anything.

(And I'm almost willing to bet that I was & will be the only person to walk across the Möchsberg and the park in Hellbrunn with Jack and Gwen and Ianto saving the world in my ears, and a probably completely inane smile on my face. soavezefiretto was right, I so needed that IPod. *g*)


1. Asylum

Well, hallelujah. Thank you. Finally addressed at least to a certain extent some of the issues that needed addressing after the much too torture-happy S2. Wanted to hug PC Andy, several times. Really liked the story and would have loved to have a tv episode with it.

It only struck me just how wrong things have gone when Gwen gets the call that she's supposed to bring Frida to the Hub, and there was an alarm going off in my head. From a pure gut reaction, however nice Gwen was being about it, I didn't trust them, and Jack most especially, with that girl's well-being at all. Which is kind of problematic, if these are supposed to be the good guys. I have no idea if last season went intentionally in this direction, exploring the darker sides of TW, or if they looked at it and at least in retrospect realised that some of team TW's actions weren't looking so good especially in view of what happened over the last years during the Bushite 'war against terrorism', but the suggestion that TW itself might be the cause of violent anti-alien discrimination in the future certainly acknowleges that things are still far from right and that Jack isn't handling this as well as the thinks he is, or changed it as much as he wants to think he did.

After this episode I'm still not a hundred percent happy, but at least recognising something basic like that there are, oh, good and evil and all kinds of moral shades of grey aliens, and acting accordingly, is at least a start and makes me feel a bit easier. Given the admittedly very difficult situation they're working in that's at least something.

( Jack though... he's really a bit of mess, isn't he? )


2. Golden Age

Didn't do a lot for me, to be perfectly honest, the premise seemed a bit... extreme, maybe? Or maybe it's because I'm not British? And Ianto must be getting a bit tired by now of almost getting killed by Jack's psychotic exes...

'I just can't die, no matter how hard I try.' (Jack)

Was Jack actively trying at one point, hoping that it would finally stick, or did he just not care at all? (me, after Fragments and the 1300something deaths) Which I guess answers that question. And a pretty awful thing to say with that kind of offhandedness.

'I was only obeying orders.' And admittedly that phrase has very likely a less ominous ring to a British ear, but my brain can't stop itself from thinking, when else, where else, doing what else?

'Since when have you obeyed orders?' (Ianto)

Ianto is has probably made some educated guesses about Jack that are more right than wrong, but he's wrong here, because Jack clearly did then, even if it meant hurting someone he loved, and probably in a lot of other situations, because TW would hardly have tolerated someone who sabotaged them at every turn. They'd just have stuck him in the cell next to the weevil, or the contemporary equivalent thereof. The cell with the weevil, even. (Which, come to think of it, I wonder if they did, and how often, before he finally gave up.) Clearly the story about how exactly he came to join Torchwood is not one of Jack's favourite dinner time anecdotes.


3. The Dead Line

Good story, enjoyed it. Would have loved to see that one, too.

Really liked that Ianto has finally advanced to some kind of officially recognised boyfriend status, so that he gets to sit beside Jack while Gwen and Rhys go out to investigate, which is also where I could almost start to suspect that TPTB are actually reading my posts because that fixes my admittedly maybe not wholly rational S1 pet peeve with Gwen's death watch while Ianto secretly snuggles Jack's coat.

Ianto's speech was beautiful and quite heartbreaking (as was the music accompanying it, as well as the 'not just a blip in time' end), and didn't surprise me at all; this was pretty much what I expected from Ianto - no illusions about what he's doing and what he has and hasn't, and suffering from it. It shouldn't be so hard for him.

( But start *talking* to each, for god's sake. *sigh* )


What I do believe is that Jack will be fighting as long and as hard as possible that no one whom he was close to will ever be just a blip in time to him. This is after all the man who cares enough to regularly check on someone whom he's dated three decades earlier, for a few weeks, to see if she's okay. Jack's when, what & with whom anecdotes might be occasionally annoying, but he's clearly holding on to these memories.

Which is how I think he eventually turned into the Face of Boe - he didn't want to forget anyone and needed a bigger brain for that. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. :)

Very much tl;dr, way too much time spent writing it, but here goes anyway. Rewatching TW S2 I (think I) finally figured out what went wrong with Jack/Ianto, and why.

Actually I had a bit of an epiphany after watching Meat, thinking about Gwen and Rhys and Jack and Ianto's respective relationships, especially that one scene with Jack, Gwen and Rhys: 'You love him. Makes you vulnerable,' and 'That's your decision.' - 'Yes, it is.' - 'You both have to live by it,' which Jack says without a visible hint of recognition that this might apply to him too, which I found a bit odd, now that I was watching the episodes without a week between them, when only in To the Last Man he'd said, albeit in a rather roundabout, Jack-esque fashion, that he did love (although maybe in a rather general Jack-esque way, but the word love was definitely mentioned) Ianto.

Because if he can tell Gwen that, he's thought about it. Probably learned from painful experience, because realistically, however much he may have disliked Torchwood as an institution, in over a hundred years there'll have been someone there before Ianto he's slept with, been friends with, possibly been at least a bit in love with, and lost, even if he hadn't personally sent them to their death. But at least during that episode, Jack sticks to what he's saying there. He won't compromise a mission and the rest of the team's safety, not for Ianto, not for Gwen. And while this does of course make sense for Jack as the leader of the team, it also is a bit harsh, especially as the Gwen/Rhys storyline in Meat is all about the willingness to take risks and make sacrifices for the person you love, rules and regulations be damned.

So I was thinking that they're really kind of hard on each other, for this to be the self-understood, unspoken thing that it apparently is (because there isn't a moment in that episode where Ianto is expecting Jack to come to his help), and how Jack could be so sure about being able to do this, when only three episodes later he'll completely lose it when Owen dies, and that sometimes the inside of Jack's head made no sense to me at all.

And that was when I remembered that originally it'd been Ianto who was supposed to die, and suddenly a lot of things started to fall into place and fit a lot better. With Ianto killed in Reset, the whole Jack/Ianto relationship that always seemed a bit haphazard (which, other than in S1 where relationships were indeed a bit experimental and erratic, the other S2 relationships are not: both Gwen and Rhys and Toshiko and Owen have consistently developed arcs from the first to the last episode with significant emotional moments and turning points) would have had a completely different dynamic.

( trying to reconstruct the original S2 Jack/Ianto arc )

( and this is what I think happened )

No wonder I kept waiting and waiting for the defining Jack/Ianto episode that I felt had to come in S2, but never did.

To be perfectly honest, I'm a bit torn about this. I'm invested enough in the characters and the ship that I was happy when (against all my expectations, let me add) Ianto actually survived S2. However, having actually given the alternative some thought beyond oh noes, they wanted to kill Ianto *again*, and especially looking at it from a story-telling perspective... I've got to say I'd kind of have liked to see how it'd have played out. The current version got us alive!Ianto, greenhouse!sex and the brilliant A Day in the Death, the but the original version would most likely have made for a much more emotionally satisfying, complex and dramatic Jack/Ianto arc, a probably improved Dead Man Walking and From out of the Rain and I think would have made Jack's characterisation rather less jumpy and much more coherent.

Or at least writing this I suddenly found myself liking S2 Jack a lot better than before...


[*] ETA: echoingvista points out that From Out of the Rain and Adam were switched; I'd assume in order to... not even so much to give Jack a better justification for trying to resurrect Owen (he doesn't remember his promise), but to make the viewer understand it a little better.

And that is the (last?) missing piece that'd make the whole of S2 flow so much better. The slow From Out of the Rain would have fit better earlier in the season, it'd have fleshed out Ianto's character and background at least a bit before they'd killed him, and Adam - which already is one of my favourite S2 episodes as it is -, would have even more powerful as well as more inherently logical. Gwen's admission that she loved Jack would have made for a smoother transition between Something Borrowed and Adrift as far as Gwen's relationship with Rhys and Jack is concerned; Adrift would have served to emphasise that regardless of her love for him there are too many things dividing them, that she'd made the right decision. If Owen kept his lines, it'd have paved the way for his death in the finale; he would still die, no one saving him, but save a lot of lives (maybe finally enough?) through his death. As for Jack/Ianto... ouch, ouch, ouch. Messed up and emotional, and I'd never have thought of that. Pretty damn genius.

My inner Jack/Ianto shipper is protesting, but I have to say that they didn't do themselves (or anyone except the Jack/Ianto fans) any favours with all those last minute changes and hasty patching up. It messed up the whole Jack/Ianto arc, significantly weakened the Jack/Gwen/Rhys arc and brought about all those inconsistencies in the relationships that drove me crazy when I was watching S2 the first (and second) time, because it made it all seem so erratic sometimes.

( Torchwood 2.13 Exit Wounds, first reaction )


More when I've calmed down & rewatched & processed.

With 100% more Jack/Ianto after all the Jack/Gwen meta in the Adrift review. And thanks go to alex_beecroft for making me watch the relevant scenes 1382 times think it all through. *g*


( Torchwood 2.12 Fragments )